


a life never loved

by sapphire_child



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: then_theres_us, F/M, Ficathon, Gen, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-15
Updated: 2010-07-15
Packaged: 2019-01-27 23:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12592976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_child/pseuds/sapphire_child
Summary: As his timeline unravels so will hers – and all the brilliant, beautiful, foolish,humanthings that she did in her time with him along with it.





	a life never loved

"I think I’ll skip the rest of the rewind," he tells Amy. "I hate repeats."

The truth of it is that he doesn’t want to go back any further than he already has, doesn’t want to have to watch his own regeneration and the many goodbyes that preceded it. And then of course would come the losses of his Tenth incarnation, the bitterness of his Ninth, the Time War and all the many lives that came before it...

But most of all, right now, he doesn’t want to see her.

He doesn’t want to have to say his goodbye to her, doesn’t want to watch her walk away... _again._ Not knowing that this time will really be the last time. He will never see her again. As his timeline unravels so will hers – and all the brilliant, beautiful, foolish, _human_ things that she did in her time with him along with it.

The ache, the loss, the mere thought of watching it all is more than enough to propel him forwards, into the light. It curls around him, into him, through...

~*~

  
When Torchwood finally puts together a pattern for the cracks, it is the Doctor who is at the forefront of the investigation. Their search for the first one to appear takes them all the way out to Leadworth, just an out of the way little village in the middle of nowhere. Torchwood are tracking mud all over the house and the Doctor is testing out his new and improved (if a lot more primitive than his last) Sonic on said crack.

Rose is interviewing the resident of the bedroom where the crack appeared, checking facts and hoping to glean some new information. Thankfully for her, the girl is sharper than most (especially her tongue) and she reminds Rose inexplicably of Donna – a fact that amuses her no end.

“So you said you first started noticing it back when you were a kid?”

Amy Pond crosses one long leg over the other where she is leaning against the doorframe. “That’s what I told that other lot. Just appeared there. It must’ve been about ’96 it really started freaking me out though.”

“You were scared of it?”

Amy shoots her a look. “Look,” she says. “I don’t know if you know this, but this crack is the reason I’ve been in _therapy_ for the past decade.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Rose assured her mildly.

“Really?” Amy looked unimpressed. “How many other people have you met who hear _voices_ coming out of cracks in their walls?”

“How about a crack between two universes?” Rose asks with a small smile. “Cos I’ve never met anyone else who’s done that before.”

Amy processes this and then a smile turns her lips upwards.

“It’s a crack in time and space,” the Doctor announces suddenly, interrupting them both. “Not the wall. Well, in the universe really. Two points that never should have touched. I think I might be able to open it though. Amy wasn’t it? Amy Pond?”

He drags the girl back over to the crack, Rose rolling her eyes as she follows. He might be human but he’s still the Doctor and he’s still clueless. The girl’s shoulders are stiff and unresponsive under his thin hands and Rose wonders exactly what it is about this damn crack that’s got this girl so scared...

And then he aims the sonic at it and light bursts from it – so bright that Rose doesn’t even realise that it’s opening at first.

“Doctor!” she yells but he’s too busy exclaiming over something, asking Amy whether she’s ever had anything go missing from her room before, whether she’s ever seen the crack do anything like this before and he doesn’t even see the tendrils of light reaching for him until they’ve ensnared him fully.

Amy screams when she realises, Rose lunges forward, and then he’s gone and the crack is closed.

The Sonic thuds gently to the carpet and Rose’s first action is to try and open the crack again. She points and buzzes and buzzes the damn thing but the crack is stubbornly sealed like some terrible mouth and Amy is scrambling at her desperately as Torchwood operatives swarm into the room.

“Doctor!” Rose screams, and somehow she’s made it to the wall and is scratching at the plaster with her bare fingers, digging them into the crack like she can tear it open with her bare hands. “No! Come back! Come back!”

She slams her palms against the wall, sobbing and screaming and then strong hands take hold of her and lead her to sit on the bed. It’s Amy and despite her obvious fear, she takes hold of Rose and they hang onto each other for grim death until Rose stops crying.

“Why’m I crying?” she asks in surprise, pulling back abruptly.

“Your friend got pulled into the crack,” Amy is a remarkable shade of pale grey. “Doctor...whoever.”

“The Doctor?” Rose looks down at the Sonic in her hands and it’s not there. “But he’s not here. He’s in a parallel world with Donna.”

She looks up and meets Amy’s terrified gaze.

And just like that, the metacrisis Doctor ceases to exist.

~*~

  
The flat seems emptier than usual (not that it’s ever been anything _other_ than half empty) and Rose rings her mum so she doesn’t have to listen to the nothingness.

They talk about the mundane, about Tony and Torchwood and Pete and the next Vitex function and it isn’t until Jackie asks her what’s wrong that Rose realises she’s crying.

“I don’t know,” she admits, wiping at her sodden face. “I’m just...I feel really...”

Jackie waits patiently on the other end while Rose tries to pinpoint the emotion and when she finally does she’s more than a little shocked.

“I’m sad,” she realises and then hiccups in surprise. “W-why am I sad?”

“Why are you _ever_ sad sweetheart?” Jackie says gently and Rose sinks into her couch, hangs up on her mother and sobs with her face in her hands.

~*~

  
“I just don’t understand,” Rose Tyler says quietly, stirring at a lukewarm cup of tea. “Why he didn’t let me stay with him. Why he sent me back here. After _everything_ I did to get back to him he just...”

Pausing to wipe away the tears burning her eyes, her breath shudders.

“I m-miss him.”

~*~

  
Rose is out getting herself some chips for lunch one day when she is ambushed by a police officer who demands that she come with her.

“Come off it,” she scoffs and turns to leave. “You know police don’t have any jurisdiction over Torchwood employees.”

“Rose,” the police woman hisses, gripping her arm. “It’s me!”

It’s only when she takes off her hat and her long red hair falls out that Rose recognises her.

“ _Amy_?”

The girl gives her a very serious look, says, “We need to talk.” And next thing they’re in the corner of a cafe and Amy is twisting the brim of her hat in her hands.

“There’s more voices coming out of the crack in my wall,” she explains with little preamble. “New ones. Women, men...all these weird languages I can’t understand. Noises...” she trails off and swallows. “Sometimes I can even hear _him_.”

Rose frowns. “Who?”

Amy stares back at her. “You’ve really forgotten haven’t you?” she murmurs. “You went nuts when he got pulled in and then it was like you just...”

“Just what?”

The girl is troubled, but not as troubled as Rose is when she finishes her next sentence. “Like you forgot him.”

Rose shakes her head, nonplussed. “Forgot _who_?”

Amy opens her mouth to explain...

~*~

  
Tony Tyler disappears and his mother doesn’t know why she aches to see women pushing perambulators around the park (around the Estate).

Jackie Tyler works from home as a hairdresser and Mickey used to come around (comes around sometimes and fixes her washer and the plumbing and the blown fuses).

Jackie Tyler has a daughter who travels with an alien (who works in a shop and has a mechanic friend called Mickey who’s sweet on her and has been most of her life).

Jackie Tyler has boxes of useless junk and paraphernalia that belonged to her Pete and one day she takes them all out and instead of feeling comforted by the tangible reminders of him she cries for the first time in years and misses him with a fierceness that winds her.

Her daughter finds her mother crying over a life that never was and can’t understand how she can grieve for a man that she never knew, will never know.

~*~

  
Rose Tyler’s father died when she was barely six months old. She never met him. She never received a red bicycle for her twelfth birthday, nor did she stop to comfort a stranger who’d had a few too many one New Years Eve.

Rose Tyler lives on the Powell Estate, has done all her life, and works in a shop. She has a boyfriend who comes to have lunch with her every day and she hasn’t really figured out what she’s going to do when she grows up. If she had the cash and the gumption and the drive she might go back to school and get her A-levels. Maybe she could work with kids or something – ones that are thinking about dropping out of school. She likes helping people. Shame it’ll never happen. Least, that’s what her mum is always telling her.

Rose Tyler thinks herself an optimist but her boyfriend is always asking her why she’s sad all the time. She doesn’t know.

~*~

  
Rose Tyler goes to work one day and eats lunch with her boyfriend and then goes downstairs at the end of the day with the money for the Lottery pool.

In this lifetime, without the Doctor there (to take her hand and _run!_ ) she never comes out again.

She isn’t the only one.

~*~

  
They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes. Well, for Rose it’s the opposite.

As she comes back to life and the timelines snap back into place she remembers it all – remembers every fantastic, simple, and stupid moment of her life with (and without) him and she is horrified that she could forget it so easily – forget _him_ so easily.

She is even more horrified when the final pieces fall back into place and standing before her is a man with wide, dark eyes and high hair and one heartbeat that she places a trembling hand over.

“I forgot you.” She whispers. “How could...?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he admits and then grins crookedly. “Next time can you make sure you stop me from poking at cracks in the fabric of the universe though? I don’t much fancy being written out of existence any time soon.”

~*~

  
They’re a ways into Amy and Rory’s extended honeymoon TARDIS trip when Amy demands to be taken home briefly to pick something up and drags them both off the ship to help her search for it.

On the wall, just beneath where the crack used to be is a post it note scrawled with a very stern message in a familiar hand.

The Doctor laughs so hard when he reads it that he knocks over Amy’s bedside table, much to his companions bemusement.

“What’s so funny?” Rory demands.

“Why’d you knock over my bedside table?” Amy grouses, righting her things and glaring at him. “Doctor?”

He tucks the post it inside his jacket pocket, still grinning, and sweeps Amy into a hug that lifts her feet right off the floor.

“Oh you clever thing you.” He breathes into her hair. “I knew you’d fixed mine but _theirs too_? Oh well done Pond!”


End file.
